Jonathan Hiskes

Who's Radical?

If that sounds confrontational, it is. McKibben, long fond of describing himself as a Sunday school teacher and mild-mannered Methodist, admits he can no longer hide behind those monikers. "I've changed, and not always for the best," he writes.

To keep himself grounded during the whirlwind of campaigning, he apprenticed himself to a beekeeper near his Vermont home. Kirk Webster is a longtime beekeeper who developed a hive-management method that promised to turn real profits selling hives and honey. In search of a dedicated young apprentice, Webster settled on McKibben—middle-aged and perpetually on the road (who also purchases land for Webster in exchange for training).

The "honey" thread of the book is not as dramatic as "oil" (how could it be?), but it offers a glimpse of what climate solutions look like on the ground. Although America has petroleum-intensive corporate farms and inspiring boutique farms, says McKibben, it needs more mid-sized farms that could help sustain low-carbon local economies.

Oddly, the beekeeping interludes end up highlighting how little Oil and Honey is about solutions. That's not a criticism, though. Protest and visionary solutions both have their roles. They are a sort of yin and yang, balancing each other. Elsewhere, in his books Hope, Human and Wild and Deep Economy, McKibben has sketched visions of successful climate-resilient communities.

That's an essential task. Americans may sense that our auto-dependent economy is sputtering, but uniting for a low-carbon future requires something to work for and not just against. We catch glimpses of this in Vermont's civic-minded communities and in the walkable urbanism of cities like Portland, Oregon.

We have policy tools for building out these solutions too. Carbon-pricing methods (cap-and-trade or a carbon tax) essentially tell industries they can't dump waste for free—the same standard we expect for other pollutants. Solar power, embraced in Germany, now provides that northern country with 30 gigawatts of electricity—the equivalent of 30 nuclear plants. And home-weatherizing programs bring a trifecta of benefits—lower energy usage, lower heating and cooling costs for families, and work for tradespeople that can't be outsourced to Asia.

McKibben aims to contribute something more: a mass movement to hold leaders accountable. To date, 350's divestment campaign has more than 300 colleges, religious groups, and cities and states working to rid their endowments of fossil-fuel investments. Students have faced the same objections that opponents of South African apartheid faced: it won't work, it's impossible to disentangle complicated investment funds, leave this to grownups. The work continues.

The aim of divestment is to drain the vast financial reserves of fossil fuel companies, and the influence over politicians that comes with it. But it has a deeper goal too. For young people in particular, the campaign is a way of asserting control over what we think of as normal and what we think of as radical. We think of men in business suits as normal and protesters in tie-dye and dreadlocks as radical. The businessman's habits are normal, even if those habits involve pumping enough carbon dioxide into the skies to fuel heat waves, droughts, fires, and hurricanes. The protestor's sweaty fervor is radical, even if her purpose is to preserve something as benign as frosty January mornings, northern honeybees, and sugar maples resting dormant as they have for thousands of winters.

Perhaps, at this historical moment, our understanding of normal and radical is backward. The oil and coal executives altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere to make money are radical. The students marching to preserve the climate we've known for centuries are sensible—conservative, even.

Jonathan Hiskes is a writer at Bastyr University in Seattle. His reporting has appeared online at The Guardian, Mother Jones, Grist, Sustainable Industries, and Comment.

Further, does support of one's cause (fighting the Keystone Pipeline) rationalize use of any and all means? McKibben tweeted his support of this group protesting the Keystone Pipeline who were on the front lawn of the home of an oil and gas corporate executive in full KKK mode:
http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/enbridge-home-demo/
Would Jesus wear a mask, carry burning torches and threaten violence and/or endorse those who do?

John Lieb

February 13, 20142:41pm

Jonathan Hiskes' review leads with the same type of discredited claims ("freak disasters such as Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy became more frequent") as McKibben is famous for repeating. This review is rife with blatant errors. Ironically, those with any familiarity with Bill McKibben's public efforts can see the same pattern of factual errors and discredited claims. I am sure Bill McKibben has the best interests of our planet at heart. Sincerity is no excuse for repeating factual errors in defense of your cause.
The fact that the earth has gone well beyond McKibben's "safe upper limit" for atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 350 ppm with no corresponding rise in global temperatures in 17 years should leave readers with questions about McKibben's climate change crusade.
Hopefully, B and C will publish more reviews that approach their subject with at least an ounce of healthy, critical skepticism. Hiskes' article is more hagiography than review.

Arita

January 26, 20142:35pm

"If the tar sands pipeline is aoeppvrd, we will be back, and we will grow...For the sake of our children and our grandchildren we must find somebody who is working for our dream". Inspiring words for us all.Bryce, as a representative of the Manhatten Institute and big oil, argues in the debate that the tar sands oil is "going somewhere", in other words this oil will be extracted and burned, period. Bill McKibben argues that the tar sands are a vast geological carbon sink similar to the Amazon rainforest, and there should be at least a 5-10 year moratorium on development.I wonder why big oil is in such a huge rush to get this pipeline built and the oil flowing? Is it really to supply energy needs, or is it because they know that in the coming decade the world is going to be hit hard with the reality of climate change and finally turn away from fossil fuels?

Ian Hutchinson

January 11, 201410:31am

I love Books and Culture. But I hate it when culture and passion become excuses for egregious errors in arithmetic used to promote a totally false message. Yes, Germany now has just over 30GW of peak installed solar electric. No, that's nothing like 30 nuclear plants. It's equivalent to approximately 3 nuclear plants. Why? Because the sun doesn't always shine. German solar plants averaged over last year produced 3.3 GW-years of energy. In other words, their actual production is on average one tenth of the peak installed rate. Nuclear plants run 24x7 and produce on average 80-90% of their name-plate power throughout the year. Your reviewer Jonathan Hiskes is passionate about the impact of fossil fuels on climate. So am I. But I don't pretend that wishful thinking about solar is a substitute for serious energy analysis. Germany cannot replace nuclear and fossil electricity generation with solar. Solar, at just under 5% of consumption, is probably nearing its managable limit.